Won't find other HDDs [though it used to..!]

[GameDr04]

So, I'm a life-long Windows user, but I decided to install Mandriva on my desktop and my laptop. The laptop installation went beautifully. The desktop installation was odd. At first, it installed Linux on my C [SATA] drive but the boot loader on my E [Primary IDE] drive. See, my BIOS puts the EIDE drives first THEN the SATA drives but my boot drive is SATA[0]. Anyway, since I'm new to Linux, the only way I could figure out how to get the boot loader on the C drive is to unplug all the other drives upon installation. Once I plugged everything back in, Linux booted fine but it would only detect the drive on which it was installed.

FINALLY GETTING TO THE POINT:
How do I get Linux to add the other three drives to it's list of installed devices..? I really need the files on those other drives!

PS - I'm a Linux N00b.

[fingal]

Ah well, it depends which bootloader you chose when you set your system up. Many people use Lilo and some prefer Grub (and there's a very good Grub tutorial in these forums).

Adding other hdds is a question of editing the lilo configuration file which is in /etc/lilo.conf

It's been a while since I did this, so I would read this: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerwork...w01LILOandGRUB

To edit it successfully you'll need to log into your root account. Linux won't let you mess around in there without that! The section in lilo.conf for adding other hdds is under 'other'. Eg:
other=/dev/hdb
label=WindowsXP

This might help a bit. You need to run /sbin/lilo -v -v after making any changes otherwise nothing will be altered. Understanding your bootloader is very very important with Linux. Once you can do that, you boot a huge range of OSs.

Lilo and Grub think of hdds differently.

Lilo Grub
hda hd0 = primary drive
hdb hd1 = secondary drive etc ...

[GameDr04]

See, I did everything you said but I CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO SAVE THE FILE once I've edited it. I think I may be doing it wrong. Here's what I'm doing - I open the terminal, login as root, type "vim /etc/lilo.conf". It gives me the file in multiple colors and a warning up top telling me to run lilo after making any changes. I CAN'T OFFICIALLY MAKE ANY CHANGES 'CAUSE I CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO SAVE! I can save the session, I can even save profiles but I can't export the file back to it's original source. I'm sorry for my stupid questions but I KNOW NOTHING about linux..!

[pavlo_7]

See, I did everything you said but I CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO SAVE THE FILE once I've edited it.

Once you edited file, to save it press Esc, then press Shift and : at the same time, then type wq and hit Enter.

If you want to quit without saving changes, follow the same steps, but type q! and hit Enter.

[GameDr04]

Once you edited file, to save it press Esc, then press Shift and : at the same time, then type wq and hit Enter.

If you want to quit without saving changes, follow the same steps, but type q! and hit Enter.

AWESOMEAWESOMEAWESOME! I love it! You have hooked me up beyond anything remotely comparable! I thank you eternally. I've been trying to find this out through every resource I know. I have a 1000 page manual on Suse that says nothing about it and the rest of the Internet assumes that I should already know that! Thank you, again.
By the by, I love these forums - quick, to-the-point responses that WORK.

[GameDr04]

OK, before I save the changes to lilo, I'd like it if somebody could look over it and tell me if everything is in order. I'd be much obliged. LILO follows.


# File generated by DrakX/drakboot
# WARNING: do not forget to run lilo after modifying this file

default="linux"
boot=/dev/sda
map=/boot/map
keytable=/boot/us.klt
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
prompt
nowarn
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux"
root=/dev/sda6
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append=" acpi=ht resume=/dev/sda5 splash=silent"
vga=788
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux-nonfb"
root=/dev/sda6
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append=" acpi=ht resume=/dev/sda5"
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="failsafe"
root=/dev/sda6
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append=" failsafe acpi=ht resume=/dev/sda5"
other=/dev/sda1
label="Windows_C"
table=/dev/sda
other=/dev/sdb1
label="Windows_H"
table=/dev/sdb
other=/dev/hda1
label="Windows_D"
table=/dev/hda
other=/dev/hda1
label="Windows_G"
table=/dev/hdb

[pavlo_7]

AWESOMEAWESOMEAWESOME! ....

I'm glad it worked for you.
I never edited LILO myself, so I can't help you with this. But, I know it's a common question, and you should be able to find some examples if you search for it on this forum.
Good luck, and welcome to the forums!

[GameDr04]

OK, so I JUST NOW figured out how to fully configure LILO and, as it turns out, that's not what I was attempting to do. Editing LILO only gave me the option to boot from the other three hard drives. I want to be able to access the other three FROM WITHIN LINUX. Can anybody help me with that? I'd deeply appreciate it.

[pavlo_7]

I want to be able to access the other three FROM WITHIN LINUX. Can anybody help me with that? I'd deeply appreciate it.

There are two ways to access other partitions from Linux:
1) mount them manually (yourself) every time you want to access them
2) have Linux mount them for you automatically

In any case, you need to know where they are located (which drive and partition) and what filesystem they use.
So, to get this information, open your terminal, and type:

/sbin/fdisk -l

or, if the above command does not show anything, try these:

/sbin/fdisk -l /dev/hda

/sbin/fdisk -l /dev/hdb

/sbin/fdisk -l /dev/hdc

or

/sbin/fdisk -l /dev/sda

/sbin/fdisk -l /dev/sdb

/sbin/fdisk -l /dev/sdc

you should see something similar to this:

 Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdc1   *        6628        8585    15727635    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdc2               2        6627    53223345    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdc3            8586       11200    21004987+  83  Linux
/dev/hdc4           11201       13024    14651280   83  Linux
/dev/hdc5               2        6627    53223313+   b  W95 FAT32

Now, you can mount and access your partitions.

For example, to manually access my Windows partition, I would create windows directory in /mnt directory:

mkdir /mnt/windows

become root, and mount the partition this way:

 su
<root password>
mount -t ntfs /dev/hdc1 /mnt/windows

If I want Linux to mount Windows partition automatically every time I boot into Linux (Debian in my case), I need to edit my /etc/fstab file, by adding this line to it:

/dev/hdc1       /mnt/windows    ntfs    user,umask=0222 0       0

Once partition is mounted, I am able to see all Windows files in /mnt/windows directory.

Good luck!

[GameDr04]

You've been such a great help which is why I hate to keep asking stupid questions... Now that I've got all the partitions mounted, they all have a little lock on the folder. I've tried two different "chmod" [one was 700 -R the other was 755] and neither one worked. In fact, I think I may have managed to add a lock to my /mnt/ directory! If you could... Please help; more..!